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Aristotle and Arius Didymus on Household and Polis

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Aristotle and Arius Didymus on Household and Polis ARISTOTLE AND ARIUS DIDYMUS ON HOUSEHOLD AND POLIS Newman noted long ago that although Aristotle was witness to the rise of Macedonia “[f]or all that appears to the contrary in its pages, the Politics may have been written while Thebes was still the leading power. Not a particle of Aristotle’s attention is diverted from the pÒliw to the ¶ynow.”1 The pÒliw remained central to his thought. As a result, Aristotle bequeathed to his followers in the world after Alexander, and especially in the centuries which saw the rise of Rome, a number of difficult philosophical and practical problems. While remaining central in many ways to the cultural and social life of Greeks (and of other peoples) it became increas- ingly difficult to make a convincing case for the political and social centrality of the pÒliw as maintained in Aristotle’s philosophy of the state. Apart from challenges from the world of politics and international affairs, there were also philosophical and purely so- cial challenges that needed to be met. Stoicism, in particular, with its doctrine of social ofike¤vsiw, the theory explaining the relation- ship of individuals to family, kin, fellow citizens and the rest of hu- mankind, offered an attractive alternative to Aristotle’s restricted emphasis on the pÒliw. Already in the works of Theophrastus and in the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica we can see a shift in doc- trine. Our sources for Aristotelian political theory in the period after Alexander are extremely limited, and it is not before the age of Augustus that we have anything like an overview. From this time there is the Epitome of Peripatetic Ethics and Politics found in the florilegist Stobaeus, authored by Augustus’ court philosopher and confidant, Arius Didymus.2 1) W.L. Newman, The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford 1887) 1.477–478. 2) First given evidentiary support, following earlier leads, by A. Meineke, Zu Stobaeus, Zeitschrift für Gymnasialwesen 13 (1859) 363–365; accepted by H. Diels, Doxographi Graeci (Berlin 1879) 69 f., and reaffirmed by D. E. Hahm, The Ethical Doxography of Arius Didymus, in ANRW II.36.4 (1990) 2935–3055. More recently Aristotle and Arius Didymus on Household and pÒliw 199 The brief summary of the Politics found in the Epitome reveals a number of significant modifications in Aristotelian doctrine. These are to be found primarily in the description of the relation- ship of household to pÒliw, and of the relationships within the household itself where in place of the strict hierarchy of Aristotle there is a new emphasis on mutuality between the spouses and a softening of the master/slave relationship. It is remarkable that of the five pages that the Epitome devotes to the Politics, two of them deal with these topics. Although the Epitome is generally considered to be the work of Arius Didymus himself, it is not clear how many of the devi- ations from Aristotle that we find there are due to Arius himself, and how many might have been introduced by others working in the peripatetic tradition and which Arius found already elaborated in the handbooks which are thought to have been his sources.3 While this issue cannot be satisfactorily decided because of the lack of evidence, it does not affect the value of the Epitome which lies in its testimony to the modifications of Aristotle’s theory of the state which were circulating in the first century B. C. and the first cen- tury A. D. Essentially what the Epitome tells us is that Arius (or his predecessors) thought that it was necessary to make changes in some of the most fundamental aspects of Aristotle’s political theory in order to bring it into conformity with contemporary political and social realities. This paper is aimed primarily at examining the nature of these changes and not whether Arius is ultimately respon- sible for them. The use of the term ‘Arius’ is not meant to imply that in all cases where the term occurs we are actually dealing with the opinions of Arius rather than those of his predecessors. T. Göransson, Albinus, Alcinous, Arius Didymus (Göteborg 1995), has challenged the identification, but the traditional position has been reaffirmed by B. Inwood in his review of Göransson, BMCR 95.12.8 (1995) (electronic) = 7 (1996) 25–30, and by A. J. Pomeroy (ed.) Arius Didymus: Epitome of Stoic Ethics (Atlanta 1999) 2. On Arius see E. Rawson, Roman rulers and the Philosophic Adviser, in M. Griffin and J. Barnes, Philosophia Togata 1 (Oxford 1989) 234–237; 243–245; 253. 3) For the Aristotelian tradition see P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias (Berlin 1973); H. B. Gottschalk, Aristotelian Philosophy in the Roman World from the Time of Cicero to the End of the Second Century A. D., ANRW II.36.2 (1987) 1079–1174. Arius’ sources were a number of late Peripatetic compendia; Moraux, ibid. 438–443; Hahm (above note 2) 2981; contra C. Lord who thinks Arius had direct access to Andronicus’ edition of the Politics in: The Early History of the Aristotelian Cor- pus, TAPA 107 (1986) 141 n. 9. 200 D. Brendan Nagle I. The household according to Arius The section of Arius’ Peripatetic Epitome dealing with house- hold management and politics (Stobaeus 2.147.26–152.25), has usually been thought to be closer to Aristotle than the longer eth- ical part (116.19–147.25).4 The differences, however, are signifi- cant. Arius’ style is often characterized, as it is here, by staccato juxtaposing of more or less interrelated theses.5 Those proposed by Arius on household management and politics are compressed and complex, and their arrangement often involves a considerable de- gree of subtlety. Information is presented incrementally, with a minimum of argument. Sometimes what looks like a forthright statement of doctrine is subsequently modified – or virtually neg- ated – by what follows. The division on the household breaks down into two theses regarding households: A. Household I: (a) First definition of the household (148.5–7) (b) The household as source of the pÒliw (148.7–13) (c) The household as model for constitutions (148.13–19) B. Household II: (a) Second definition of the household (148.19–149.11) (b) Wealth-getting (149.11–23) After a general introduction asserting that man is by nature a political animal, Arius presents the first two subtheses of Section A (148.5–13) as follows: 4) Citations in Moraux (above note 3) 1.419. Cf. M. Pohlenz, Grundfragen der stoischen Philosophie (Göttingen 1940) 38 and n. 2. The most detailed discus- sion of the household and political sections is provided by Moraux, but see also Gottschalk (above note 3) 1125; 1127–1129; more briefly, M. Giusta, I dossografi di etica (Turin 1967) 2.522–523; 530–531. All page references to Arius are from Wachsmuth’s 1884 edition of Stobaeus. 5) The theses are at times linked systematically in elaborate divisions, cf. the comments in this regard of D. E. Hahm, A. A. Long, R. W.Sharples in W.W.Forten- baugh (ed.), On Stoic and Peripatetic Ethics: The Work of Arius Didymus (New Brunswick/London 1983). There are exceptions to this as the well known, extended discussion of ofike¤vsiw in the Peripatetic Epitome demonstrates; Moraux (above note 3) 437–438. Aristotle and Arius Didymus on Household and pÒliw 201 (a) The first association is the union according to custom of husband and wife for the purpose of raising children and sharing life in com- mon. And this union is called a household; (b) it is the source of the pÒliw. Regarding this last point the following needs to be said. The household is, in fact, like a kind of small city if, at least as one would wish, the marriage increases and leads to children, and they, coupling with one another, another household is brought into existence; then a third and a fourth. From these comes a village and, [finally], a state, for when a number of villages come into existence a pÒliw is produced.6 To take the differences between Arius and Aristotle in order we have the following: 1) When Aristotle first introduces the subject of the house- hold he emphasizes that it consists of two distinct subcommunities or relationships, that of husband and wife, and that of master and slave. From the combination of these two communities the first household (ofik¤a pr≈th, 1252b10) results. Later he repeats and elaborates this into a principle: In its perfected form the household is made up of free and unfree parts (ofik¤a d¢ t°leiow §k doÊlvn ka‹ §leuy°rvn sun°sthken, 1253b4). The pÒliw for Aristotle is a sÊnyeton or a sÊnyesiw, an example of a class of natural entities that are composites, wholes made up of uncompounded elements, ésÊnyeta.7 By themselves the parts – the household and the vil- lage – lack complete autarky. Full self-sufficiency is achieved only 6) Polite¤a d¢ pr≈th sÊnodow éndrÚw ka‹ gunaikÚw katå nÒmon §p‹ t°knvn gennÆsei ka‹ b¤ou koinvn¤&. ToËto d¢ prosonomãzetai m¢n o‰kow, érxØ d¢ pÒle≈w §sti: per‹ o dØ ka‹ lekt°on. Mikrå gãr tiw ¶oiken e‰nai pÒliw ı o‰kow, e‡ ge katÉ eÈxØn aÈjom°nou toË gãmou ka‹ t«n pa¤dvn §pididÒntvn ka‹ sunduazom°nvn éllÆloiw ßterow o‰kow Íf¤statai ka‹ tr¤tow oÏtv ka‹ t°tartow, §k d¢ toÊtvn k≈mh ka‹ pÒliw. PleiÒnvn går genom°nvn kvm«n pÒliw épetel°syh. 7) 1252a19–20; 1253a20; 1254a25–30; 1262b10–20; 1276b6; 1328a21 f. “The State is .
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